Du bist die Ruh (2016)

In the winter of 2016, the Long Beach Laptop Collective (from CSU Long Beach) went on an international tour throughout Germany to perform Voyage, a reconceptualization of German lied by Schubert, Schumann, Strauss, and Brahms. The project initiated in 2013, when the group teamed up with a Korean theatre troupe led by Byunkoo Ahn to premiere the concept at the “Spoleto Open” Festival dei due Mondi in Spoleto, Italy. Nearly four years later, the concept was reimagined once again in Hamburg and Berlin with the same troupe, this time with several new pieces added to the set.

Du bist die Ruh isa reimagining of the original song by Schubert. It begins with the soft hum of crickets. Next enters my own version of the art song using excerpts of the original text, which is filtered to sound as though it could be coming from off-stage. This leads into a duet of pitch-shifted singing bowls and a resonant, melodic bass, with a processed version of the same art song overlaid.

The video below was taken from a live performance on January 24, 2017 at Monk Space, Los Angeles.